How I Accidentally Became Director of Sales.

My LinkedIn bio says I lead sales operations with a focus on structure, scalability, and sustainable growth. That's true. It's also the most sanitized version of a story that involves a 13-year bartending career, a sugar daddy with a secret wife, a Walmart reunion, and the single most petty workplace exit I have ever executed.

Let me tell you how I actually got here.

13 Years Behind a Bar

For most of my adult life I worked in hospitality. Restaurants, cafes, bars — all of it, eventually at the high end. Managing teams, running shifts, keeping everything moving under the kind of pressure that would make most people spiral. I was good at it. I was really good at it.

But it took everything. Hospitality always does. It takes your nights, your weekends, your body, your patience, and eventually it just takes you. When I finally got out of the last high-end bar I was done. Not burnt out — done. Like, fundamentally, at a cellular level, done.

I had 16 weeks of unemployment. And instead of immediately panicking and grabbing the first job I could find, I did something I hadn't done in a long time: I just existed. No job. Just mom. Just me. Just figuring out who I actually was outside of a shift.

It was one of the best decisions I've ever made. And then it ended, because bills are real, and I needed work.

The Scrubbing Toilets Era

When unemployment ran out I took a residential cleaning job for dirt cheap. It was not glamorous. It was not where I saw myself. But it was something, and something was what I needed.

That's also when I met Cody — first date, great time, terrible timing for both of us. Life wasn't lined up. We went our separate ways. I kept cleaning houses.

Around that same time a client of mine — a man who owned rental properties — offered me a salary position managing his properties and overseeing unit remodels. No more scrubbing toilets? Sign me up. I took the job immediately.

I'm going to gloss over some details here and just say: that situation was more complicated than it appeared, and approximately two weeks in I discovered he had a wife. And a child. And another child on the way. I met her. She was lovely. I was horrified. I left.

The Hawaii trip was great though. That part I have no notes on.

Walmart. Cody. A Second Chance.

A few weeks after extracting myself from that situation I ran into Cody at Walmart. He said hi. I did a double take. I thought: wait — who is that. wait. come back. you're pretty.

I texted him that I missed talking to him. He responded. We have hung out basically every single day since.

That's the Cody origin story and I'm leaving it right there because it deserves its own post. What matters here is the timeline: around this same period, I was back managing properties for the same employer — the post-situation, professional version of the arrangement — and at some point we had brought Cody in to help with projects.

My boss eventually figured out we were dating.

And that's when things got ugly.

Fired. Obviously.

Workplace harassment. Pulled a bunch of nonsense. I reported him to HR. Was fired the following morning.

I'd like to say I was shocked but I wasn't. I was just tired. And done. Again.

So I did what I apparently do when life blows up — I cleaned things. Airbnbs this time. Whatever. It paid. I kept moving.

The Ski Lodge Arc

I got a job at a ski lodge in Brian Head. Casual housekeeper. Free ski pass. Honestly? Win win. I wasn't trying to climb anything. I was just trying to breathe.

And then I got promoted. And then promoted again. And then promoted a third time until I was running the housekeeping operation. Which — if you know me — makes complete sense, because apparently I cannot enter a disorganized system without immediately needing to fix it.

But the management there was a disaster. The operations manager was immature, reactive, and made problems out of things that were not problems. I hit my limit on a completely ordinary Tuesday over something so aggressively stupid I almost respect it in retrospect.

The issue was name cards. Hotel room name cards. Standard ones that housekeepers use. I had used one from a coworker's stack — completely normal, completely standard practice — and this girl decided that was an ethics violation worth having a meeting about.

I looked at her. I looked at the room. I thought about every single thing I had survived to be standing in this hallway having this conversation.

And I said: "If this is the crisis we're managing today, I could just leave and someone else can ethically finish my rooms."

And I left. Walked straight out. Never went back.

That Night.

Here's the thing. I had already applied for a job through an employment agency. The listing was for a company called Zip Kit Homes. I had gone to the interview, felt it go well — like genuinely, deeply, I-nailed-this well — and had put in my notice at the ski lodge without actually having the offer yet. Because I knew. I just knew.

The call came that night. Job offer. I started the next morning.

They weren't entirely sure what to do with me when I arrived. They just knew they wanted me based on my resume. I interviewed for administrative assistant. I started in purchasing and inventory. That was the plan.

The plan lasted about as long as plans usually last around me.

The Quiet Takeover

I didn't set out to become Director of Sales Operations and Client Relations. I set out to do my job well, and my job kept expanding because that's what happens when you're the person who builds the systems everyone else depends on.

Purchasing became operations. Operations became project management — ten active projects at any given time. Project management became process building. Process building became revenue infrastructure. Revenue infrastructure became the role I have now.

Nobody handed it to me. I just kept solving problems, building structure where there wasn't any, filling gaps, asking better questions, and showing up every single day as the most organized, capable, slightly-unhinged version of myself.

Cody has watched all of this happen from the front row. He met me when I was scrubbing floors for next to nothing, rebuilding from scratch. He has been genuinely, visibly proud of how far this has come — and that means more than the title does, honestly.

On my LinkedIn it says: Growth without structure creates chaos. Growth with structure creates momentum.

That's true. But the version I'd put on a t-shirt is this: I walked out over name cards, got a job offer the same night, and have been building something real ever since.

That's the actual origin story. You're welcome. 🌿⚡